Members:
K.Y. AMOAKO - Ghana
Alicia BARCENA IBARRA * - Mexico
Eveline HERFKENS - Netherlands - Vice-Chairperson
Nagesh KUMAR - India
LI Lailai - China
David RUNNALLS - Canada
Leonora DE SOLA SAUREL - El Salvador - Treasurer
Jomo Kwame SUNDARAM - Malaysia
Simon S.C. TAY - Singapore
Simon ZADEK - British
Ernesto ZEDILLO* - Mexico
* to be confirmed
Distinguished Fellows:
Sylvia OSTRY - Canada
Mark HALLE- United States of America
Dr. K.Y. AMOAKO
President of the African Center for Economic Transformation (ACET)
K.Y. Amoako led the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) from 1995-2005 at the rank of Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations. Under his leadership the ECA was transformed to more effectively serve African policy makers, to amplify the African voice internationally, and to influence African partners. He has emerged as an influential advisor to African leaders, ministers and other senior policymakers on various areas including macroeconomic policies, international trade, regional integration and good governance. And he advocated for and led the conceptualization of key principles of the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) and other pan-African and regional initiatives.
Mr. Amoako has served alongside leading development experts and political leaders and on high-level international commissions and task forces, addressing the development prospects of Africa and many of today’s central global issues. He is Chair of the Commission for HIV/AIDS and Governance in Africa, convened by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and was a member of the Commission for Africa established and chaired by Prime Minister Tony Blair. He was also a member of the Global Information and Infrastructure Commission, the World Bank Institute’s Advisory Council, and the Taskforce on Global Public Goods co-chaired by former President Ernesto Zedillo. Previously he served on the Commission on Capital Flows to Africa and on the World Health Organization’s high-level Commission on Macroeconomics and Health chaired by Prof. Jeffrey Sachs.
Prior to ECA, Mr. Amoako was Director of the Education and Social Policy Department at the World Bank providing strategic leadership for the Bank’s programs on poverty reduction, education, gender, labor markets, and social protection. He was a Distinguished African Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington DC, in 2006. He obtained his Ph.D in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley and was awarded a Doctor of Laws degree, honoris causa, by the Addis Ababa University in 2003, and a Doctor of Letters degree, honoris causa, by the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana, in 2005, both in recognition of his contribution to Africa’s development. Mr. Amoako was selected in July, 2007 by an influential US magazine Vanity Fair as one of two individuals who have done more to move Africa’s economy forward than any.
Mr. Amoako has recently established the African Center for Economic Transformation (ACET) in Accra, Ghana to promote high-quality policy analysis and advisory services to African governments with the objective of achieving long-term sustained growth and transformation of African economies. ACET is in response to two institutional challenges to African development: the need to improve the capacities of African governments to formulate and implement informed and sustainable economic policies; and, the need to increase the ownership of and accountability in the development process among African governments.
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Ms. Alicia BARCENA IBARRA
Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).
13 May 2008 Secretary-General BAN Ki-moon announced the appointment of Alicia Bárcena Ibarra of Mexico as Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). She will replace current Executive Secretary José Luis Machinea as of July 1.
The Secretary-General expressed his gratitude for Machinea’s dedicated service to ECLAC, where his intellectual leadership and deep knowledge of the region contributed greatly to the Commission’s relevance and achievement of its goals. The Secretary-General is also grateful for Bárcena’s committed services to the UN; she has energetically led the push for management reform, spearheading several initiatives to make the Secretariat more efficient, responsive and accountable.
Bárcena served as the Chief de Cabinet to former Secretary-General Kofi Annan before serving as the Under Secretary General for Management.
Earlier in her career, Bárcena served as Deputy Executive Secretary of ECLAC and in this capacity she contributed substantively and increased interagency collaboration to provide a regional perspective on the Millennium Development Goals and on Financing for Sustainable Development, connecting issues of inequality, poverty, economic development, sustainability with the required fiscal policies needed to address extreme poverty.
As Chief of the Environment and Human Settlements Division of ECLAC, she heightened the profile of the regional commission in the areas of climate change, sustainable energy, fiscal policies and environment. She previously served as Coordinator of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), as well as Adviser to the Latin American and Caribbean Sustainable Development Programme in the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
She was part of the Secretariat that was in charge of preparing the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992. She was Principal Officer in charge of various topics related to Agenda 21 and was also the Founding Director of the Earth Council in Costa Rica.
Previously she served in the Government of Mexico as the first Vice-Minister of Ecology and as Director-General of the National Institute of Fisheries.
In the academic arena, Bárcena was the Director of the South-East Regional Centre of the Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones sobre Recursos Bióticos in the State of Yucatán, working closely with the Mayan communities. She has taught and researched on natural sciences mostly on botany, ethnobotany and ecology. She has published a number of articles on sustainable development, namely on financing, public policies, environment and public participation.
Bárcena holds a Bachelor of Science in biology from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and a master’s degree in public administration from Harvard University. Ms. Bárcena Ibarra was born in 1952.
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Ms. Eveline HERFKENS
UN Secretary General’s Executive Coordinator
Millennium Development Goals Campaign
The Secretary-General appointed Eveline Herfkens as the Executive Coordinator for the Millennium Development Goals Campaign in October 2002. Prior to this appointment, Ms. Herfkens served as the Netherlands Minister for Development Cooperation (between 1998 to 2002). During this time, she was also a Member of the World Bank and IMF Development Committee and a Co-founder of the Utstein-Group. Presently she is a member of the World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization established by the International Labour Organization (ILO) in February 2002.
Ms. Herfkens served as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary and Permanent Representative of the Netherlands at the United Nations and other international organizations-including the World Trade Organization (WTO)-in Geneva (between 1996 to 1998). Ms. Herfkens was an Executive Director of the World Bank Group in Washington D.C. (between 1990 and 1996).
Ms. Herfkens was a Member of Parliament in the Netherlands (between 1981 to 1990). She served as Member and Counselor-Treasurer of Parliamentarians for Global Action (between 1985 to 1990). She was also a Member of the Economic Committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and Co-organizer of the North-South Campaign. Ms. Herfkens was a Policy Officer in the field of development cooperation at the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs (between 1986 to 1989).
Ms. Herfkens has also served on the Council of the Labour Party. She has been Chair of the Evert Vermeer Foundation, Chair of the Dutch Fair Trade Organization and a Member of the Development Committee of the Netherlands Council of Churches.
Ms. Herfkens studied Law and Economics at Leiden University and graduated in 1975.
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Dr. Nagesh KUMAR
Director-General of RIS
Dr. Kumar was appointed the Director-General of RIS in October 2002 upon the superannuation of Dr V.R. Panchamukhi, the founder Director-General of RIS. Dr Nagesh Kumar obtained his PhD in Economics from the Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi. Dr Kumar joined RIS in 1985 after holding teaching and research positions at the University of Delhi, Indian Institute of Public Administration and National Institute of Science Technology and Development Studies. During 1993-1998, Dr Kumar served on the faculty of the United Nations University - Institute for New Technologies (UNU/INTECH), Maastricht, the Netherlands, and directed its research on FDI and technology transfers in developing countries. He has also served as a consultant to the World Bank, UNDP, UNCTAD, UNIDO, UN-ESCAP, ILO, among other organizations. He received the Exim Bank of India’s first International Trade Research Award in 1989 and shared a GDN Medal awarded by the World Bank in 2000. He has written extensively on the developmental impact of MNEs and FDI, industrial and technology development policy, the challenge of new technologies for development, on regional economic co-operation, and WTO and development, among other themes.
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Dr. LI Lailai
Deputy Director of Stockholm Environment Institute
Li Lailai received her bachelor’s degree in English, and a master’s and a doctorate in sociology from the University of Pittsburgh in the United States. Prior to her appointment as the National Program Director of LEAD-China, Li Lailai worked as a research fellow at the Institute of Sociology and Anthropology at Peking University, where her research was focused on the interactions between the Chinese traditional values, agricultural activities and environmental impacts. She also served as Director of Information Resources at LEAD International (part time) from 1997 to 2001, She participates in the development of LEAD’s information strategy, thereby fulfilling her interest in exploring the role of information and information technology in the human endeavor toward the greater sustainability of society.
Her research experiences and areas lie in NGO development to meet the functional requirement / challenge of the society and exploration of alternative development paths toward global sustainability.
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Mr. David RUNNALLS
President & CEO IISD
David Runnalls is President of IISD. He is a member of the Board of the Institute of Advanced Studies of the United Nations University. He is a member of the Advisory Council for Export Development Canada; a member of the Council for Sustainable Development Technology Canada; and a member of the Ivey Business School Leadership Council. He also serves on the Inquiry Team for Tomorrow’s Global Company, the SAM/SPG Leadership award, the International Sustainability Innovation Council of Switzerland (ISIS), and the Shell Report External Review Committee.
He has served as Co-Chair of the China Council Task Force on WTO and Environment. Runnalls was the Leopold Fellow at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and a member of the federal External Advisory Committee on Smart Regulation (EACSR). He served as Chair of the Adjudication Panel for the ALCAN Prize for Sustainability.
Runnalls has served as Senior Advisor to the President of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) in Ottawa, Canada, and to the Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme. He was Director of the Environment and Sustainable Development Programme at the Institute for Research on Public Policy in Ottawa. He worked with Barbara Ward to found the International Institute for Environment and Development and directed both its London and Washington offices.
Runnalls was the Canadian Board member of IUCN-the World Conservation Union for six years and the Chair of the Committee for the World Conservation Congress in 1996. He served as a member of the Boards of the World Environment Center (New York), IIED (London) and Pollution Probe (Toronto).
An occasional writer and broadcaster, he has served as environment columnist for the CBC radio program, As it Happens and for CTV’s Canada am. He was a member of the Discovery Channel’s regular environment panel and political columnist for the Earth Times, the paper of record for the United Nations Earth Summit in 1992.
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Ms. Leonora DE SOLA SAUREL
Private Investor and Member
of the Advisory Board of Bain Capital, Europe
Former Ambassador of El Salvador to the World Trade Organization and its forerunner the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs. Responsibilities included: chairing the Services Negotiating Committee, negotiating Textile quotas and Representing El Salvador at the different United Nations Organizations dealing with economic affairs.
Ms. De Sola Saurel was Vice President Private Banking Department in charge of Mexico and Philippines at the Bankers Trust Company, New York, N.Y. USA. Her education includes a Bachelor of Arts in 1968 from Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville N.Y.
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Dr. Jomo Kwame SUNDARAM
United Nations Assistant Secretary General for Economic Development
Jomo Kwame Sundaram (born 11 December 1952), better known as Jomo KS, is a prominent Malaysian economist, who is currently serving as the United Nations Assistant Secretary General for Economic Development in the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA). He was also the founder chair of International Development Economics Associates (IDEAs), and sat on the Board of the United Nations Research Institute For Social Development (UNRISD), Geneva. Jomo is a leading scholar and expert on the political economy of development, especially in Southeast Asia, who has authored over 35 monographs, edited over 50 books and translated 11 volumes besides writing many academic papers and articles for the media.
Jomo is widely perceived to be an outspoken intellectual, with unorthodox non-partisan views. During the Asian financial crisis in 1997-98, Jomo was one of the earliest advocates of capital control measures, which then Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad eventually introduced to curb excessive currency speculation. However, when then Deputy Prime Minister, Anwar Ibrahim was imprisoned without trial under the Internal Security Act, Jomo publicly condemned the repression. In late 1998, he was sued for defamation for 250 million ringgit by Vincent Tan, a Mahathir era billionaire.
Named after two African nationalist leaders, Jomo was born in Penang, Malaysia, soon after Jomo Kenyatta was incarcerated in late 1952. He spent his early years studying at Westlands Primary School (1959-63) and later at Penang Free School (1964-66). He later won a scholarship to the Royal Military College (1967-70) where he was selected as Malaysia’s delegate to the World Youth Forum in 1970. He later attended Yale College (1970-73) on a full scholarship. After graduating cum laude from Yale with a degree in economics, Jomo went on to the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard to obtain his MPA in 1974. He lost his father in early 1974 and returned to teach at the University Sains Malaysia in mid-1974, before beginning work on his Ph.D. at Harvard which he completed in late 1977 while teaching at Yale after earlier teaching stints at Harvard while working on his doctorate. The title of his Ph.D. dissertation is Class Formation in Malaya: Capital, the State, and Uneven Development (1978).
Jomo returned to Malaysia to research his thesis in 1976 before joining the economics faculty of University Kebangsaan Malaysia in early 1977. Five years later, he moved to the University of Malaya, where he remained for more than 22 years. During this period, Jomo was British Academy Visiting Professor and later Visiting Fellow at Cambridge (1987-88, 1991-92), Fulbright Visiting Professor at Cornell University (1993) and Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. He was also founder director of the independent Institute of Social Analysis (INSAN) until late 2004, President of the Malaysian Social Science Association (1996-2000) and Convenor of the first and second International Malaysian Studies Conventions (1997, 1999). In January 2005, Jomo moved to New York City as UN Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development after retiring from the University of Malaya in 2004.
Jomo’s extensive writings have covered industrial policy, privatization, rent-seeking, cronyism, financial liberalization, macroeconomic policy impacts, economic distribution, ethnic relations, Islam and Malaysian history. His better known recent books include Privatizing Malaysia (Westview, 1995), Southeast Asia’s Misunderstood Miracle (Westview, 1997), Tigers in Trouble (Zed, 1998), Malaysia’s Political Economy: Politics, Patronage and Profits (Cambridge University Press, 1999), Rents, Rent-Seeking and Economic Development (Cambridge University Press, 2000), Malaysian Eclipse (Zed, 2000) and The New Development Economics (Zed, 2005).
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Prof. Simon S.C. TAY
Chairman of the Singapore Institute of International Affairs
Chairman of the National Environment Agency
A world-renowned lawyer, political adviser and environmental policy expert, Professor Simon S.C. Tay teaches international law at the University of Singapore. He is Chairman of the Singapore Institute of International Affairs, a non-governmental think tank, a member of the ASEAN-Institutes of Strategic and International Studies (ASEAN-ISIS), a “track-2” grouping of nine regional think-tanks that study and advise on international issues. Also, Prof. Tay is Editor (Singapore State Practice) of the Singapore Year Book of International Law and Executive Committee Member of the Asia-Pacific Centre for Environmental Law.
Prof. Tay serves on a number of civil society organizations and government bodies, including the Singapore Environment Council, and National Parks Board. In 1998-99, he served on the Singapore 21 committee, appointed by the Prime Minister to look at challenges in the next century. In 2000, he co-chaired a feedback committee for the Ministry of National Development to look at the city’s concept plan and issues concerning conservation. In Jan 2000, the World Economic Forum (Davos) named him a “global leader of tomorrow”.
He gained a Masters degree from Harvard - in the process winning the Law School’s Laylin Prize for the best thesis on international law - and practiced for four years in one of Singapore’s largest commercial law firms before leaving to help set up the Singapore International Foundation.
As well as being leading figure in Singapore public life - he served three terms as a Nominated Member of the Singapore Parliament, and has sat on numerous government boards and committees - he has gained an international reputation for his work on environmental and human rights issues.
He has acted as a consultant to, among others, the United Nations Environment Programme, the United Nations Development Programme, the Asian Development Bank and the Asia-Pacific Forum on Environment and Development. In 2000 the World Economic Forum (Davos) named him a ‘global leader of tomorrow’, while the Far Eastern Economic Review featured him as one of ‘ten people to watch in Asia’ in its 50th anniversary issue.
In addition to his legal, academic and public work he is a prolific journalist and also a published poet and author - his collection of short stories, Stand Alone, was short-listed for the Commonwealth Prize.
Prof Tay’s area of research interests are, in particular, issues related to environmental law and sustainable development, trade, investment and environment, Asian regionalism and institutions, governance and public international law and international relations.
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Dr. Simon ZADEK
AccountAbility Chief Executive and Founder
Dr Simon Zadek, a British national, is Chief Executive of AccountAbility, a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Government and Business of Harvard University’s Kennedy School, and an Honorary Professor at the University of South Africa’s Centre for Corporate Citizenship. He sits on the International Advisory Board of Instituto Ethos, the Advisory Board of Generation Investment Management, the Board of the Employers’ Forum on Disability and the Council of GAN-NET. In 2003 he was named one of the World Economic Forum’s ‘Global Leaders for Tomorrow’.
AccountAbility is a non-profit, membership organization established in 1995 to promote accountability innovations that advance responsible business practices and the broader accountability of civil society and public organizations.
Dr Zadek is one of the leading big-picture global thinkers on corporate social responsibility and accountability. His previous roles include Visiting Professor at the Copenhagen Business School, the Development Director of the New Economics Foundation, and founding Chair of the Ethical Trading Initiative. He has served on numerous Boards and Advisory Councils, including the State of the World’s Commission for Globalisation, the ILO’s World Commission on the Social Dimensions of Globalisation, the UN Commission for Social Development Expert Group on CSR, and the founding Steering Committee of the Global Reporting Initiative.
He sits or has sat on a number of boards including the Global Alliance for Workers and Communities, the World Bank’s, the Copenhagen Centre, the Nordic Partnership and the GRI. He has also advised and consulted with textiles and apparel, mining and energy, pharmaceuticals, and finance sector businesses and NGOs in Europe, the USA and Africa.
He has supported many business’ efforts around the world in driving accountability innovations into their strategies and practices. His work has increasingly focused on facilitating businesses and their stakeholders in developing mutual understanding and collaborative initiatives. His work in this regard has been both at company level, for example for Gap Inc in their work around labour standards, and GE in its development of its approach to human rights, through to his convening role of the MFA Forum, a large-scale collaboration involving leading textiles and apparel companies, civil society and labour organisations, international development agencies and financing institutions, and national governments and business associations.
He has authored, co-authored, and co-edited numerous publications, including more recently two Harvard Working Papers on the role of multi-stakeholder partnerships in development and governance, Governing Partnership Governance (2006) and The Logic of Collaborative Governance (2005). He has written extensively on the impact of corporate responsibility on the competitiveness of nations Responsible Competitiveness (2005). His PhD thesis was published as The Economics of Utopia (1994), and published an anthology of his writings Tomorrow’s History (2004). His book, The Civil Corporation: the New Economy of Corporate Citizenship (2001), has become a classic in the field, and has been recognised by the Academy of Management by being honoured as the Best Book Social Issues Award 2006.
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Dr. Ernesto ZEDILLO
Director of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization
Professor in the field of international economics and politics at Yale University
Ernesto Zedillo was born in Mexico City, he attended Mexican public schools, graduated from the School of Economics at the National Polytechnic Institute, then earned a Ph.D. in economics at Yale. He held several positions at the Central Bank of Mexico over the course of a nine-year tenure with that institution, including deputy manager of economic research, general director of the trust fund for the renegotiation of private firms’ external debt, and finally, deputy director. He served in the national government from 1987 to 1993 as Undersecretary of the Budget, Secretary of the Budget and Economic Planning, and Secretary of Education.
In 1994 he was elected President of Mexico. For the next six years he led his country into the new millennium with an unflinching devotion to economic reform and a strong commitment to democratic values. He pulled the nation out of a financial crisis right at the start of his term and the result was that under his leadership, Mexico experienced its highest five-year period of GDP growth in recent history. At the same time, social programs were allocated an increasing proportion of the federal budget each year, reaching their highest historical share in 2000.
During his presidency Ernesto Zedillo undertook bold democratic and electoral reforms, opening the way for greater political pluralism in a nation long dominated by a single party. The peaceful revolution he led finally brought real democracy to the people of his country. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, in describing Mr. Zedillo’s decisions and actions to make Mexico’s political transition a reality, former President Bill Clinton called this “one of the great acts of statesmanship in the history of modern democracy.”
Since leaving office in 2000, Ernesto Zedillo has remained a leading voice on globalization, especially its impact on relations between developed and developing nations. He served as Chairman of the United Nations High Level Panel on Financing for Development in 2001; the panel’s Report was presented in June of 2001. He currently serves as Co-Coordinator of the Task Force on Trade for the U.N. Millennium Project which launched its Report, Trade for Development, on January 17, 2005. Along with Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin, he Co-Chaired the Commission on the Private Sector and Development which presented its report, Unleashing Entrepreneurship, to Kofi Annan on March 1, 2004. He is Co-Chairman of the International Task Force on Global Public Goods, sponsored by the Governments of Sweden and France. He recently was elected to Chair the Global Development Network, a global network of research and policy institutes that address problems of national and regional development.
He is a member of the Trilateral Commission, the International Advisory Board of the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Board of Directors of the Institute for International Economics. With decorations from the Governments of 32 countries, he is the recipient of Honorary Doctor of Laws degrees from Yale and Harvard Universities, an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from the University of Miami, an Honorary Degree from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and he served as Harvard’s Commencement Speaker for 2003. He is the recipient of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Freedom from Fear Award, the Gold Insigne of the Council of the Americas, the Tribuna Americana Award of the Casa de America of Madrid, and the Berkeley Medal, UC Berkeley’s highest honor.